Evan Ziporyn: Reviews

Weaving Western Instruments and Asian Hammers Together
on Gamelan Galak Tika Zankel Hall performance

“An intoxicating tone of wave-like rhythms and ringing

sonoroties... A cross-cultural, color-rich mix of mesmeric

gamelan resonance and rock drama!”

"Sophocles, Greek dramatist, and Artie Shaw, American bandleader, lived in different worlds, but it's no surprise that composer/clarinetist Evan Ziporyn can bridge them -- his whole career has been about making us see and hear that music is one world..." read more

Frog's Eye
Evan Ziporyn | Cantaloupe Music

In its brief existence, Cantaloupe Music has become one of the most intrepid labels in new music, and clarinetist Evan Ziporyn, a member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, has emerged as one of its most powerful compositional voices. One test of an artist’s worth is his or her ability to take influences and create a new voice by filtering them through a more personal lens, and Ziporyn’s previous records for the label--This is Not a Clarinet (Cantaloupe, 2001) and Shadowbang (Cantaloupe, 2003)--were undeniably distinctive, mixing his interest in classical form with music from distant cultures.

Frog’s Eye is his first record of orchestral works, and he meets the ambition of writing for larger ensembles head-on. This program continues to mix his diverse interests, including Balinese Gamelan, minimalism and unorthodox textures. Finding an ensemble capable of navigating Ziporyn’s multifaceted compositions was no small feat, but the Boston Modern Orchestra Project is clearly sympathetic to the composer’s broader requirements.

The title track begins with clear references to Steve Reich but, like modern-day Reich, Ziporyn goes beyond the mathematical to create music that’s hypnotic by virtue of its repetition, and innately lyrical as well. Simple melodic and rhythmic fragments are introduced, gradually fading into the mix as new ones are established--until, in some cases, they disappear entirely. The result is a pulsing ebb and flow that develops in ways beyond the interaction of these fragments, coming across as more based on movement than the persistent evolutionary development of pure minimalism.

The other orchestral track, “War Chant,” begins by referencing composer György Ligeti. Long-toned melodic ideas emerge out of a strangely static yet swirling undercurrent, with the occasional sharp punctuation added for dramatic contrast. But while his spatial concept is similar, Ziporyn doesn’t rely on the tension that Ligeti’s microtonal dissonance created. Instead he incorporates percussion along with Hawaiian guitar to create a more diverse landscape. The composition gradually evolves through an almost jazz-like horn section to a more delicate Gamelan-like passage of cascading strings and light percussion. Then it advances to a darkly spaced climax that, finally, releases tension with spare dissonant chords and gradually slowing percussion, before returning to Ligeti territory for its brief coda.

“The Ornate Zither and the Nomad Flute,” with soprano Anne Harley, and the closing “Drill,” featuring Ziporyn on bass clarinet, were written for a wind ensemble subset of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Both pieces challenge convention through the addition of a percussion section that, again, connects to Ziporyn’s world music concerns.

Together the four compositions form what Ziporyn calls “an inadvertent symphony”--each piece is self-reliant, yet they all work as part of an unintended larger whole. Frog’s Eye is further evidence of Ziproyn's status as a composer of increasing significance.

Evan Ziporyn's extensive experience with Balinese gamelan and his background with Bang On A Can are evident in the four works for orchestra or wind ensemble on this CD. The fact that the pieces each inhabit a distinct sound world is a testament to his versatility and range as a composer. What the pieces have in common is their organic development - a satisfying sense of inevitability that is never predictable or formulaic. The Boston Modern Orchestra Project, conducted by Gil Rose brings its considerable energy and virtuosity to these performances.

The CD opens and closes with the most upbeat pieces. Frog's Eye is a bright and attractive work that begins by combining the simple gestural elements and additive processes of minimalism to create contrapuntal and textural complexity, and eventually coalesces into a driving rhythmic unison at the end. Drill, ebullient and jazz-inspired, features the composer as bass clarinet soloist.

The Ornate Zither and the Nomad Flute is a setting for voice and wind ensemble of two poems, one by the ninth century Chinese poet Li Shangyin, one by the contemporary American W.S. Merwin. Rather than setting the texts sequentially, Ziporyn intermingles the Chinese and English. The setting is notable for its orchestration, which is magically sparkling, while maintaining contrapuntal and harmonic simplicity, and for the lyrical vocal writing.

War Chant, which is described as evoking the sounds heard inside an airplane during take-off, flight and landing, is the most musically abstract piece on the CD, and is less indebted to the influence of the gamelan than the other works. Like Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (to which it bears an occasional superficial sonic resemblance), it does not require knowledge of the program to be fully appreciated. Its rhythmic and gestural inventiveness, and unexpected juxtapositions make it consistently engaging.

With ShadowBang [Ziporyn] has created his most ambitions and, possibly, enduring work to date. Intended to be experienced in toto, ShadowBang is both an entertaining and enlightening way to spend an hour." read more

"Evan Ziporyn With I Wayan Wija: Shadowbang" (Cantaloupe): Since Debussy first saw a Balinese gamelan orchestra at the Paris World's Fair near the start of the 20th century, Javanese music has been a source of inspiration to Western musicians. Bang On a Can clarinetist Evan Ziporyn teams up on this disc with shadow puppet master I Wayan Wija and an ensemble of instruments more common to rock bands than classical music to create this original and entertaining look at the Balinese entertainment world, finding uncommon common ground in the process.

Another world. ShadowBang, the fusion puppet show by Evan Ziporyn and I Wayan Wija that came to MIT's Kresge Little Theater in October, offered us the chance to laugh without irony or guilt for the first time in many weeks. The Balinese shadow play sets opposites alongside each other: good and evil, humans and supernaturals, heroes and villains, lower-class sages and confused nobles. You can't always tell the good guys from the bad guys, and in battle neither side wins conclusively. It's the world not as it should be but as it is - in highly fictionalized form.

"Woodruff, Ziporyn, and the cast and crew have shaped a 90-minute tragedy that goes beyond histrionics. That doesn't make it any less dramatic: This "Oedipus" is the essence of great drama."

Ziporyn’s ravishingly discordant music and Saar Magal’s sinuous waves of movement, it takes that lemon of most contemporary productions, the stilted and action-stopping contributions of the Chorus, and makes a lemonade so piercing on the tongue that you almost forgive said tongue for being Ancient Greek, thereby forcing your eye to the supertitles...

For the amplified heterophonic score, Ziporyn, who is head of music and theater arts at MIT and a member of Bang on a Can All-Stars, melds Western and Eastern instruments and styles, mixing melodious — and sometimes screeching — cello, bass, keyboards, and guitar with Chinese and Javanese percussion. The rich-toned part singing is similarly contrasted with Indonesian vocalist I Nyoman Catra’s arresting but more abrasive sound. Catra also epitomizes the theater piece’s subtle choreography, augmenting a solo stasimon, for example, by slow-motion movement that shifts between balance and imbalance. Elsewhere, the Chorus moves sideways across the stage like a tight, swaying knot."

"This is Not Clarinet"; Evan Ziporyn, clarinets (Cantaloupe) *** One way to avoid being compared to other performers on your instrument is to disregard the standard repertoire entirely. You’d have to look far and wide to find someone to compare with Evan Ziporyn, the Bang on a Can clarinetist and MIT composer who has gone to greatly imaginative lengths to expand the dimensions of his instrument. Worried that a solo clarinet (and bass clarinet, just for variety) can’t sustain a full-length disc? Ziporyn’s blazing virtuosity, as well as his cross-cultural openness, make this disc thoroughly, if idiosyncratically, entertaining. Ziporyn’s "Partial Truths" opens the disc with an impressive study of harmonics. After his "Four Impersonations," which draws freely from musics of other cultures (including, amazingly, Balinese gamelan), Michael Tenzner’s "Three Island Duos" continues the South Pacific musical tour. The disc closes with David Lang’s "Press Release," a quirky solo etude of syncopated octave skips fitted to a rock groove that, by the standards of the rest of this recording, sounds strangely conventional.

The tradition of the composer-performer has faded since the middle of the 19th century, but it isn't entirely dead yet. Evan Ziporyn pursues a dual career as a composer and a clarinet virtuoso, and as this superb solo disc demonstrates, each side informs the other to invigorating effect.

The repertoire is brilliant and varied, from David Lang's bumptious "Press Release" to Michael Tenzer's "Three Island Duos" -- both of which are tailor- made for Ziporyn's lithe, succulent and rhythmically charged style. In "Four Impersonations," he offers transcriptions -- "transmutations" might be a better word -- of music from Japan, Indonesia and Kenya.

But the tour de force is Ziporyn's own "Partial Truths," an extended monologue for bass clarinet that ranges smoothly from obstreperous bounce to moody elegy and back again. His suave use of extended clarinet techniques -- playing multiple tones, or humming and playing in eloquent counterpoint -- is an understated musical triumph, and takes place within a context of exuberant rhythmic and melodic invention. The piece is a vibrant little masterpiece.

CLASSICAL CDs: Triumph on the clarinet
by Joshua Kosman , San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, Sept 23, 2001

The is one of the first releases on Cantaloupe Music, a new label from the Bang on a Can stable. Evan Ziporyn presents works by himself (Partial Truths for bass clarinet, and Four Impersonations for clarinet, all rather like improvisatory explorations of particular performing techniques or non-Western musical evocations), Michael Tenzer (Three Island Duos, ethnic or imagined ethnic fantasies for two clarinets) and David Lang (Press Release for bass clarinet, a honking riff which shuttles between extremes of register, dangling islands of comparative relaxation before exploding again). The music is sonically arresting, and the playing first-rate. The printed insert contains credits and advertisements but no notes - these have to be chased up on the website.

"...Without electronic gismos or studio trickery, the clarinetist shapes and contours his instrumental colors with utmost precision, making the familiar instrument sound like synthesizers, percussion instruments, and human voices. By singing into the instrument, he creates chords and harmonies, moving with and against the instrumental melody. His sense of melodic invention and, at times, sheer funkiness, is uncanny. Likewise, using circular breathing - a technique by which one uses air stored in the cheeks to continue to play while gulping air in through the nose - Ziporyn creates perpetual motion passages to rival those of pianists and violinists.

But it is his panoramic notion of music that makes this disc gel. From eastern and middle-eastern accents to the whole of western classical music, jazz, the avant garde and pop music, Ziporyn seamlessly and organically allows the music to evolve. The sheer variety makes this 52-minute solo record flash by like a snap of the fingers. This Is Not a Clarinet is a thing of absorbing beauty, exquisitely pushing the boundaries of the known clarinet world as it soars to an exotic, lofty perch of its own.

Daniel Buckley (Music Critic, Stereophile/Tucson Citizen)
Tucson Citizen July 26, 2001

The cover and title of Ziporyn's recording allude, of course, to Magritte. "This is not a clarinet," assuredly, it is a recording of a clarinet. But what it really is, all coyness aside, is a solo summit of the state of theis instrument (indeed, Ziporyn must have alluded justifiably to the late Joe Henderson's great summation "The State of the Tenor." This could be called the State of the Clarinet).

Having called this a solo clarinet work is a bit unfair, since Ziporyn overdubs his work in several places. He uses both bass clarinet and the standard Eb [sic] clarinet, in combination and alone. And in the course of the recording, he displays sundry techniques on the instrument. I'll mention only a few, accomplished clarinetists would probably pick up more. Ziporyn is gifted with a rich, fat tone for starters. At times he sings through the horn to add chord notes, and he will overblow to get double tones, too. He does some slap tonguing of the bass calrinet for rhythmic effects and he will use the clacking of the keys to add rhythm. At times, Ziporyn will syncopate the bass note and the soprano note to play two lines at once. When you add all this virtuosity to his occasional overdubbing, the resulting CD doesn't feel solo at all.

This is a richly rewarding recording, and anyone who loves clarinet should search it out. A must for those who dig the "licorice stick."

So Percussion is a venturesome new quartet; this smart debut release offers nothing but the members' names and the audible evidence of their formidable musical skills. These players work their way into rhythmic grooves at once sharply controlled and loose enough to breathe, and the disc boasts the repertoire to put those virtues into play. Evan Ziporyn's "Melody Competition," as its title suggests, is a stylistic free-for-all, in which thematic strains from Balinese gamelan, Chinese pentatonic scales and a thumping American bass drum are thrown into the ring and left to duke it out with invigorating and often surprising results. In "The So-Called Laws of Nature," composer David Lang works over a few well-worn rhythmic and tonal patterns at great length; the repetitiveness of the music is alleviated by the group's shimmery range of tonalities.

Today's musical closer concerns a clarinet player who's unlike any other clarinet player. For one thing, Evan Ziporyn has been composing since he was 10 years old. Ziporyn's new album features his clarinet, and his clarinet alone. And, as Jill Kaufman reports, his main inspirations are the "gamelans," or percussion ensembles, of Indonesia.

Guardian Limited review of All-Stars at Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, October, 2002

Bang on a Can, "Renegade Heaven" (Cantaloupe). New York post-minimalism's leading ensemble appropriates modal-rock's surging energy in these five pieces, which range from sample-delic ("I Buried Paul") to electrifyingly locomotive ("Escalator"). 2. Basement Jaxx, "Rooty" (XL/Astralwerks). This British electro combo's survey course in disco, funk and other borrowed African American styles is anything but academic; it's more shapely, driving and tuneful than anything produced recently by such models as Prince.

"...This particular interpretation, by the musicians of Bang on a Can and their friends, trades San Francisco for New York City. The original trippy tremolo makes way for the pluck of a pipa and the twang of electric guitars. This a post-grunge 'In C,' free from nostalgia yet fully of a piece with Riley's musical ethos. Playing like this proves that this musical flower child still has plenty to say to us today."